New Orleans Hornets guard Eric Gordon needs to be a pro, forgiveness will follow

Be a pro. That’s all Eric Gordon has to do in order to cleanse New Orleans’ pallet, after he shoveled ash into the mouths of Hornets fans around two weeks ago.

Michael DeMocker/The Times-PicayuneWhat Eric Gordon needs to do is to help the New Orleans Hornets win and he'll be accepted by the fans.

Play hard, produce, stay healthy, fulfill community obligations and say the right things (most of the time), and forgiveness will be granted sooner rather than later for the Hornets shooting guard.

And, yes, it can be that easy for Gordon, who said his heart was in Phoenix and he wouldn’t be happy playing in New Orleans after Phoenix presented him with a four-year, $58 million contract offer, and now hopes there are no hard feelings after New Orleans did exactly what it vowed to do all along – matched the offer Gordon received as a restricted free agent, after calling him the best player on the team and stressing he is the foundation of the team.

Sure, feelings have been hurt and some anger will continue to simmer for a while.

Gordon knows that, which is why he has gone public hoping to tamp down what, at best, could be a mixed reaction when he’s announced with the starting lineup in the New Orleans Arena early next season. Fans don’t take well to hearing their team slighted, or to allegations that no direction has been determined when they know the tone publicly was established as to what were the team’s intentions.

“Hopefully it won’t be (a bad) reaction,” he told T-P Hornets beat writer Jimmy Smith. “I don’t know what kind of reaction, to be honest. Hopefully it will be a good one, and these four years will be better than my last four. Or that these years to come will be my best since I’m still young and growing.”

But what mostly should have mattered during Gordon’s free agent foray is that Gordon remained a professional at its conclusion, especially in the locker room and on the court but, hopefully, also when he’s out of the arena and representing the franchise.

If people didn’t think he’d shower the Suns franchise with compliments, and take intentional or unintentional jabs at the Hornets while doing so, perhaps they only should be a little less disappointed in themselves for not considering that option as they are in Gordon for exercising it.

C’mon.

To the heavens, Gordon was going to praise the franchise that laid out a four-year, $58 million offer sheet. He’d have done the same if the Pacers had made the offer instead of the Suns.

Particularly, he was going to do so if, due to naivete or wayward advisement, he was under the impression that the Hornets wouldn’t match, or that New Orleans would be unwise enough to offer him a maximum deal (five years, $79 million) to keep him off the market, rather than wait to see if it could sign him for less.

Nothing Phoenix did, or Gordon said, was reason for Hornets fans to panic.

It was business, Gordon told Smith while playing defense, and fans have to understand it was business.

No, it wasn’t great, savvy business that Gordon – and perhaps his representatives – seemed to forget or ignore the fact that by accepting and signing an offer sheet, the Hornets’ power was strengthened.

The franchise was going to match. It wasn’t going to let him walk away without receiving any compensation – not with him being the centerpiece player for the Hornets in the Chris Paul trade with the Clippers, and not with him being the player around whom the franchise wants to build.

If Gordon truly wanted out of New Orleans, and wanted to sign a deal that the Hornets wouldn’t match or one that’d get him out of town in a sign-and-trade, all he had to do was accept his qualifying offer for the upcoming season (around $5 million), play out the last year of his original contract and wait to be dealt near the trade deadline, or leave as an unrestricted free agent after the season.

So it didn’t sound great, or particularly bright, that he urged New Orleans to not match the offer.

But he doesn’t yet need to be great in area of saying all the right things at the appropriate times.

He just needs to be willing and able to do the right things, to show he can be counted on now that the Hornets have matched the offer, the surest sign the franchise can give him of how valued he is and how much it believes in him.

Every indication is that he’ll do just that, and that the prelude to the franchise matching his offer sheet was theatrics that should’ve been overlooked or, at least, minimized.

Play hard, average 20-plus points per game, lead the Hornets in deed (if not word) and help the team win, and the emotion over the words Gordon said about joining Phoenix will fade.

In other words, all he needs to do – all he truly owes – is to be a pro.